Local area networks are widely used as a mechanism for making available computer resources, such as file servers, scanners and printers, to a multitude of computer users. It is often desirable with such networks to restrict user access to the computer resources in order to manage data traffic over the network and to prevent unauthorized use of the resources. Typically, resource access is restricted by defining access control lists for each network resource. However, as the control lists can only be defined by the network administrator, it is often difficult to manage data traffic at the resource level.
Wide area networks, such as the Internet, have evolved as a mechanism for providing distributed computer resources without regard to physical geography. The Internet Print Protocol (“IPP”) emerged as a mechanism to control access to printing resources over the Internet. However, IPP was replete with deficiencies particularly with respect to administration of a large number of network resources to a large user base. For example, the ability to restrict access to firewall protected network resources is compromised when firewall access ports remain open for extended periods of time, i.e. are open and waiting for network traffic to access them. For example, access to IPP printers cannot be obtained without the resource administrator locating the resource outside the enterprise firewall, or without opening an access port through the enterprise firewall. Whereas the latter solution provides the resource administrator with the limited ability to restrict resource access, the necessity of keeping open an access port in the enterprise firewall exposes the enterprise network to the possibility of security breaches.
Network resource access systems were developed that provide a central mechanism that simplified access to network resources such as printers. The network resource access system typically included a central or distributed database for storing information about the printer resources that assisted users in finding and using the desired network resource. Often these systems would rely on a name or logical location information that a user of the system would use to select or locate the physical location of the network resource.
User's of a network resource access system may submit a print job to a general location that may be served by multiple printer resources or to a specific printer resource. Each printer resource may include any number of different release mechanism that allow a user to release a print job. In addition each release mechanism may require different authentication information that is used to release a user's print job. How a print job is released may also depend on how the print job is submitted to the network resource access system and what information was provide along with the print job. Therefore, releasing a print job can be a difficult user task since the user may encounter any number of different release mechanisms that require different authentication information.